I've played with reaction-diffusion quite a bit, which is an adjacent idea, and there can be some fun in trying to delete all the solitons - which can be an interesting challenge when they behave like like rapidly-replicating gliders!: https://www.mrob.com/pub/comp/xmorphia/F180/F180-k530.html.

My kids enjoyed that as a semi-game like challenge in an RD I made in Android app 'Shader-Editor' on phone, and I reckon something similar but using Neural-CA could be really fun!

Particularly if animated/dynamic (moving) patterns could be developed - like 'The Powder Toy' (et al) but less discrete and more continuous - and far less aliasing!

How about a Terraria-like crafting game, crossed with Powder Toy and using NeuralCA, Reaction-Diffusion and other continuous automata like fluid Sims too! Sounds like it could be fun!?

I doubled the angle so that it doesn't drift to the side any more.. and put it back to 7-symmetry, but left it with the coloring I added (now adjustable via consts):

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/7Xl3Ws

And a small tweak:

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/73lGDs

If you squint with it on fullscreen on that last one there's a wonderful mixture of things feeling like they are rotating vs flowing inward-and-outward from 'centers' (like it's ambiguous whether it's curl or divergence somehow for my eyes/brain at least!).

Hooray for sines and cosines and shaders and thanks for motivating me to play!

It struck me as looking a bit like a demoscene plasma effect but with a radial/angular aspect! (also reminds me of cymatics diagrams a bit!)

I experimented with non-integer symmetries and it seemed not to introduce discontinuities, and I made it produce an RGB value for fun too:

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/7XsGWs

The code was really interesting to read and tinker with! I made a version where the symmetry (7 originally) can be other numbers, and that was fascinating to see!

ShaderToy forever!!

"...later, if the rodent reenters that place, the cell will fire"

Totally fair and normal of course I just had been imagining human or generic neurons/dendrites up to that point. The test species wasn't mentioned earlier as far as I can see!

I'm glad I'm on a source distribution (Gentoo, even though it does require patience) so I could in-theory edit/patch out the nasty bits before they even become binaries if anything like this ever does go ahead! (Seems unlikely to really work for Linux users anyway really though, for many of the reasons you suggested!)

I wondered, since quandong sounds like an Aboriginal word, whether it might be similar to what happened with the word 'sapote' in South American fruits. I have heard that it means 'soft fruit' and hardly any of them are even related species!: White Sapote (ice-cream fruit, it's amazing, related to citrus) Black Sapote: might not quite live up to the name chocolate-pudding-fruit, but a perfectly ripe one is still delightful imo, related to persimmon) I haven't tried Mamey Sapote yet or any others.. something to look forward to! :)

I'm envious of that volcanic soil! Quite clay-y in the Adelaide Hills.. I have had a white Sapote in the ground for years and it's still less than 1m tall :/ don't know if it will ever fruit.. should care for the soil better I'm guessing, that might get it going :)

Must have been ideal conditions for it in your case and maybe it happened to be a particularly vigorous/fast-growing variant!? I have heard that it can be hard to get the seeds to germinate (sounds like it was working without troubles on your property!) I'd actually be kinda happy if it took over most of the grass at my place though I reckon! :)

I live in South Australia and I was surprised to hear about all Eucalypts having 'leaf dimorphism' (that is what I searched for, then learned that it's usually known as 'heteroblasty') I have of course seen it many times in-the-wild, but it is not universal to all Eucalypts.

Banksia, Grevillea and Hakea are also very beautiful Australian native trees/shrubs imo, but they are a different group: Proteaceae. And there's a fascinating fruiting small tree called 'Quandong' that's in the Sandalwood family (still seems bit related to eucalypts or maybe Wattle (Acacia) when looking at it in real life though).

Additionally, meta+middle-mouse-drag allows one to resize a window from anywhere in the whole window!! (it chooses the closest corner when the drag starts) and this, being able to resize a window without needing to put the mouse in a usually-very-thin window border, is extremely liberating in my opinion! To the point where I really miss it on sub-windows where the app is handling resizing/etc itself!

There's a Windows app I used to use that supports the same kind of thing for Windows (different key I think), no idea if there's one for Mac I'm afraid - or whether it can be configured to work that way, but there probably is one so it would be worth investigating if this sounds useful to you I'd say!

Yeah Apple does have "secure enclave" on some devices, and maybe in many cases it would wipe itself before you got in, but maybe that just means a more careful-hand is needed? (Again, physical access and extreme care/caution when debugging/investigating the chip should work eventually I think!) - I am not a hardware hacker, just have read about it quite a bit!

I'd also add: It's like Aaron's whole career is slightly resting atop Amen Break, at least as far back as (first I heard and still my favorite) The Chocolate Wheelchair Album! Amazing detailed work with Amen and similar samples that's for sure!

https://softologyblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/ducks-fractal...

I really like how Ducks fractals produce detail across the whole image (a pet favourite feature in fractal renderings), but I find that Ducks huge abundance of symmetries made them a bit less natural feeling, and have less variety than say, the cloudy 'inside' of a Nova-family fractal when relaxation is turned up.

My particular favourite is in demoscene tracker music where Amen also went all over the place (and sampling more generally too!)

I'm not sure if the below is actual Amen-break (need to ask BrothomStates probably!) but it's certainly in the spirit of it and this is definitely near or at the top of my favourite demos ever, I just find it so damned cool! "The Day the Earth was Born" by TPOLM:

https://youtu.be/rt8cOLZHQ4c?si=Y323k8qog3Tv8uou

Despite all the astounding developments in AI/ML though, I still think there's still a critical need for the application of human/biological imagination and creativity. Sure the amount of leverage between thoughts and CPU cycles can be utterly giant now, but it doesn't seem to diminish the need (where performance or correctness/less-bugs are needed) for a full understanding of what the computer actually gets up to in the end.

For what it's worth, we do have an ML department at RSP and they are doing great! But I'm not sure we'd get very far if we tried to vibe-code the underlying pipeline, as it really requires full understanding of many interlocking pieces.